How did intellectual pursuits become unworldly? In these spicily vigorous lectures, Sloterdijk attempts a genealogy of the idea, so natural-seeming to us, that theoretical thinking should be associated with an ascetic retreat from life. The problem starts, he argues, with Plato's description of Socrates' death as the logical culmination of his philosophical practice. After that, despite the occasional heroic dissenter such as Nietzsche, the ideal of the thinking human was mainly that of "a kind of dead person on holiday". (The German title of this book is Suspended Animation in Thought.)

Sloterdijk can be very funny, in an intensely sardonic way, about "quasi-homeopathic philosophers", "loser romanticism", or the notion of intellectual "commitment". "A good part of what we call 'culture'," he snarls, "is a non-chemical 'sedative'." What should we do? Pursue a life that is "neither merely active nor merely contemplative", which Sloterdijk calls the "life of practice". I was ready to stride out into the world, but then my contemplation of Sloterdijk's passing reference to "the phenomenon of involuntary verticality" gently compelled me to become horizontal.

Elizabeth Meakins, What Will You Do With My Story? (United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy) (UKCP)

The phenomenon of involuntary horizontality, by contrast, might rear its head if your therapist happens to be in irritable mood: "I began to fantasise about getting her to use the couch," this psychoanalyst author winningly confesses of one session, "so that I could nod off (and repeat her experience of maternal abandonmment) without being noticed." Meakins describes her own various frustrations with patients and aspects of the discipline itself, while emphasising the virtues of a more ecumenical approach that does not fear encroachment by CBT or even poetry. (She has a habit of thinking of nicely apposite lines by Blake or Yeats during a session.)

The theory is interleaved with tableaux about specific patients written for the newspapers: men and women who self-harm, or can't choose, or retreat from life. (Not always into the ecstasy of theoretical contemplation.) We are shown numerous skirmishes in what the author nicely calls "the average neurotic civil war", as well as deeper reflections on issues such as the unconscious, secrecy, or breakdowns. I only wished some kind copy-editor had corrected Meakins's habit of referring to someone "towing the line", or maybe I just need to get out more.

Vanessa Parody, Fifty Shelves of Grey: A Selection of Great Books Erotically Remastered

The horizontality here is all voluntary: presumably aimed at the Christmas gift-book market, this volume consists of parodic extracts of classic and modern literature with added sex. So the snorting reader is regaled with Henry James ("Lady Pensil is a huge aficionado of the strap-on"), Dumas (the three gay musketeers), Immanuel Kant's "Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Cunnilingus", and so forth. The book is not completely devoid of humour, though the funny bits are not the schoolyboyish shagging jokes (the compulsion to which a literary psychoanalyst would no doubt find interesting) but the passing throwaways of invention, such as a character in TheLord of the Rings being named "Elronhubbard".

Since Fifty Shades of Grey is at least as much a fantasy of wealth as it is a fantasy of sex, it might have been a more interesting exercise to rewrite classics of erotic literature so that they are all about money. You can call it Fifty Shades of Payday, if I get a cut.